Google AI: Traffic Shifts to Shopping Search Ads

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There’s new data indicating that Google’s AI Overviews are significantly reducing organic click traffic to websites. Meanwhile, for e-commerce searches, there’s a notable rise in clicks on search ads and product/shopping ads.

A report on her blog highlights that for certain e-commerce queries, users are shifting away from organic or free listings toward paid product search ads. Across various categories, the share of clicks on traditional organic results has declined, but text ads and product listing ads (PLAs) have gained substantially. Notably, the most consistent “winner” isn’t AI itself but the rise in text ads and PLAs, especially in product categories.

Here’s a breakdown of her findings:

In four U.S. verticals comparing early 2025 to early 2026, the share of organic clicks dropped dramatically:

– Headphones: from 73% to 50% (-23 percentage points)
– Jeans: from 73% to 56% (-17 percentage points)
– Greeting cards: from 88% to 75% (-13 percentage points)
– Online games: from 95% to 84% (-11 percentage points)

Conversely, there was a surge in text ad clicks across all categories:

– Headphones: 3% to 16% (+13 percentage points)
– Jeans: 7% to 16% (+9 percentage points)
– Greeting cards: 9% to 16% (+7 percentage points)
– Online games: 3% to 13% (+10 percentage points)

Additionally, product-related categories experienced a double impact, with both text ads and PLAs seeing increased paid share:

– Headphones: paid share rose from 16% to 36%
– Jeans: from 18% to 34%
– Greeting cards: from 10% to 19%

This trend suggests a deliberate shift towards paid advertising, probably encouraged by Google to monetize the search results more heavily. The hypothesis is that Google is nudging advertisers to move their budgets into paid ads to maintain visibility in this evolving search landscape.